ZZ Top, Akaba and Moog taurus pedals.

Its Saturday and a good one as well...Ive just spent the better part of the day at Riksmixningsverket with Mats Lundgren (Atlas/Pineforest Crunch) working on the edits on the Akaba album. I think we made it a bit leaner and faster. Radio apparently isnt too fond of the long noisy instrumental bits.

Its interesting bouncing between the tracks that we have been working on for so long. The album hasnt taken a long time to record its just been incredibly spread out but now it looks like we are done....and we might even have the first song for the next album ready.

Im really proud of the album. The songs are like postcards from where we were at the time. There are songs that are completely drenched with the Korg Ms-10 just because it was my favorite synth at the time. There is one track that is more or less based on Casio SK-5 sampled rhythms in octaves. The newer stuff is also interesting. The new Nord drum is getting used a fair bit as well as the Yamaha SK-10. We have tried to be smart about the Taurus pedals as we use them so much....But it shows up on a fair amount of tracks. The Taurus pedals have always been one of my favourite sounds as it makes everything on top sound amazing. I bought them in 1998 at a music store in Houston for 800 dollars. The music store was next door to a bar owned by one of the guys from ZZ top. I remember sitting in the bar drinking a beer sort of sweating afterwards because of the rush of finding them. I have used them with pretty much every band I have ever played with. Akaba uses them live. Together with Tobias guitar and loops and my stuff it becomes a really nice blend.

Im really happy that the album has retained the feel of what the band sounds like live. A lot of Baritone guitar, electronic rhythms and of course Åsas voice. Something tells me its gonna be surreal to see the cover and actually hold it in my hand.

Possible final mix for Akaba...

Its been going on for a while now but its seems like the Akaba album is finally done. I did a first mix on the final track yesterday (It has a working title to horrible to mention so Ill just call it Voldemort). Voldemort was very refreshing to mix as it is a track that has less than 24 tracks on it and it was recorded without a clicktrack. Its got that cool acoustic live feel that everybody likes.

Its a pianobased song with Tobias Ljungkvist playing the grand Piano and then there is the Roth Händle Pipe organ in the choruses and a splash of Mellotron at the end. Its really cool. Now we just need to figure out how to place it on the album...If you put at the end it sort of becomes "the quiet ending track". Voldemort is fairly depressing for being a first track...Its too different to just put in the middle. It sounds like theres going to be discussions.

We will be doing final editing tomorrow and then it is off to Abbey Road and Giles Martin for mastering.

There is also small Kaukasus mumblings going on as Im uploading files for a new track to the others. Its a 11 minute thing with the working title "Sliding Blue". Its gonna be great.

NP: Elliott Smith: No Name#3

Video of the day 22nd of February 2014....Akaba sessions.

Tobias Ljungkvist and the Vox String Thing

A great day in the studio yesterday. We started off listening to a Akaba track called Everything Matters to sort of close the book on the track but realized very quickly that it needed....lead vocals and drums (maybe).

So we moved on to another track with the horrible working title Rifle gun. Its a weird track and were are not completely sure wether it will make it on to the album. So we started by having Tobias recording his signature instrument, the baritone guitar. 

Tobias recording Baritone guitar

I think its very important to do stuff in productions that work as question marks. So we pulled out an old Vox String Thing and pulled it thru NecroDavids Peavey.

Recording the tremeloed Vox String Thing

This pushed the track in a completely new direction so we recorded two takes with the tremelo at different settings to create a weird fluttering effect. As bass we added the Stylophone 350s. To give the choruses more high end energy and movement we recorded two takes of Mono/poly arpeggios. By doing this we had changed the whole feel of the track making it much more electronic in a slight 80s fashion. The half tempo drums I had recorded sounded utterly out of place and probably wont be used. To get the drums more harmonic we used the Vocoder plus to make the electribe follow the chords....and then we ended it all by recording a Chamberlin Piano thru a rather dull sounding Boss Leslie pedal.

Video of the day 12th of February 2014

Stephen Hawking in zero gravity. Look at that smile!

So smart and still no gravity. Makes you think.

Yesterday I posted a video from the Carl Hasselrot sessions recording the wonderful Juno 106. This is a synth that I havent used too much but Im using it more and more.

This little film is from the latest Akaba sessions. Roth Händle veteran Tobias Ljungkvist doing his thing and trying to sneak in a pitchbend. A messy one too.

Today Ill be mixing another track for the all Optigan/Mellotron/Chamberlin/Orchestron album. 

Its a really fun track with a slight Tim Burton edge to it.

I Think.

Tobias wrestling a oily Pez.  

That sounds a lot more interesting than the truth right?

Tobias punching a nun in the face. OMG! OMG! OMG!

A bit too violent but still pretty happening.

Stephen Hawkings last shave

Now...thats just sad, isnt it?

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Ive always liked...stuff. Things that capture my eye. Things that can start an idea or push my thinking in another direction. It might be a toy, book, film or game, an instrument or even a coffee mug. For me its really important what I visually surround myself with. It can be something like a Star Wars postcard that will bring me back to the feeling I had when I saw the movies at the cinema when I was a kid. Little things that spark something. So just before christmas I decided to upgrade my coffee mug. It wasnt a big deal but considering the fact that I touch the thing every 15 minutes eight hours a day, six days a week it becomes a permanent fixture on my desk. And yes....I use the same one all the time. 2013 was the year of the moomin mug. 2014 will be my Nineteen eighty-four mug. Seems very suitable. 30 years later things are worse than George Orwell predicted. Some people even seem to think he was an optimist. 

But more interestingly it puts time in a different perspective. The future has a tendency of coming sooner than you think. Today we continued working on the Akaba album. We have been working on it for more than ten years. A couple of kids got born in the middle of the sessions. Moved the studio a couple of times, reformed a horrible band (please note band-horrible music- pretty darn cool) not once but twice, made some money, lost some money. But we are getting there...we are closer now than we have ever been. Its exciting and fun even though Im struggling with it from a visionary perspective.

When you start recording a track you usually start with something fairly grey and dull. Clicktrack, guide vocal, guide guitar/keyboard. But fairly early on in the process you will probably add something with more colour and attitude. Something perhaps....a bit cool. Something that will probably be there until the end. 

The problem is that the energized feeling you had from recording that "cool" overdub will soon fade as you hear it over and over again. And you will probably add more crap on top....stuff that you think is even "cooler" and before you know it your first impulse/overdub is hidden under a pile of of "pseudocool" overdubs that are probably all based on that first technicolour overdub (that you cant even hear anymore because of all that stuff you put on top). The problem is that first overdub was probably cool...for real. As it was your first impulse, that first idea, the first reaction.

And I see this tendency in a lot of projects Im working with. There is always one more overdub you can do. The problem is that they are really fun to do as well. But maybe one should always try to listen with those "first overdub" ears because that is exactly the way your audience will hear it. 

Maybe that should have been in Orwells book. In the future you will have unlimited recording possibilities. The horror!

On the track we are working on now...there are actually a couple of those early "cool" ideas. The verses have three Baritone guitars playing against each other with a Zvex lo-fi loop junky in the middle creating a weird tilted chorus effect.

The choruses on the other have next to nothing harmonically...A very ambient synth going thru a small stone phaser and the akg reverb and then the chords are played on a Yamaha SK-20

Here is a video from that first session.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf-XZheQrfA

It sounds very "open" and I felt very strongly that it should stay like that. So we focused on the bridges instead adding first a Chamberlin steel guitar that was augmented with doubletracked Burwood 9 stringed guitars. 

We also added a cluster of guitars at the end of the choruses playing almost harpsichord like patterns.

2 Dano Convertibles with Zvex seek-wah

1 Epihone les paul with Zvex Seek wah

2 Burwood nine strings Clean

1 Eko acoustic 12 string with builtin pickup.

To get more notes but avoiding the organs territory we recorded the Roland Vocoder plus using the original drum machine as the trigger. The roland went thru the Sonic alienator to give it an almost snare buzz feel. The end result is almost abba esque. (please note that this is my interpretation of Abba esque...Tobias and Åsa didnt agree)

To add bass but without real "personality" we recorded two takes of the Roland Juno-106 ...low bass....and....superlow bass.

Rhythmically we added some 808 BD and 909 SD from the modular and treated them with some delays. To finish the whole thing off I record a sort of "road to nowhere" rhythm using a floortom and a snaredrum. Together with the rest it became an almost train-like feel but very small and multidimensional....at the same time. To give the whole thing more depth I reamped (as in pulled them out thru a guitar amp and recorded them again) the acoustic drums and miked them far off to get the acoustics of the room.

We worked an entire day on the track and in the end we had amplified things but kept the sonic core intact. I feel very pleased about that. I could have have added 16th notes and cymbals to the choruses but it just felt unnecessary. 

Take care....and thanks for reading.

NP - Beethoven String quartet No. 15 in Aminor

There is a right and a wrong way and a right way.

Yesterday was my first day back in the studio after a couple of days off. I worked on the Akaba album as we have some mixdates booked with Alar Suurna and we are actually hoping to finish this album fairly soon. The song we were working on was a remake of an old track called Fake it.

The day started with me recording drums on the track. Everything was already miked and set up so it took maybe 30 - 40 minutes to get the right take. After that I did Three different treatments on the drums. I always record the AKG reverb as it sounds so luscious and then I did two treatments using the Boss digital delay to get more movement in the drumtrack. Also by panning both delay bounces you get some good headphone candy going on.

On the track we had just a very simple bass in the choruses. I couldnt actually pinpoint what sound it was. It could have been the bass or tuba sound from the Taurus pedals or possibly something very clean from the Yamaha DX-100.

The bass sound worked but it could use a bit more character so as Tobias Ljungkvist had arrived we used an old Hagström bass through a guitar amp to get more grit and attack into the sound. The sound was fairly thin but we didnt really need more bass just some framing eq-wise.

After we had recorded the bass we decided to try something different. In a previous blog I wrote about the ideas I have floating around...one of them was making an ep or an album completely based on the VCS3. Well I thought I could start by trying to record some bass on the Fake it track.

So as I dont have a keyboard for the VCS3 I decided to do it old school. First tune oscillator one, then oscillator two and then oscillator three....record the first note on the chorus and start retuning the synth for note number two and so forth. The sound was really huge and really organic.

But for me it had a completely different worth. It sort of connects to those first pioneers of Electronic Music who worked with tape and very few and primitive possibilities. So where other people might feel that it is archaic I get a certain kind of rush to do it like this. Also using the VCS3 as a tonal instrument and not just as an effect unit feels very cool.

So when I posted the picture on line I wasnt really prepared for the onslaught about how very very very important it is to have a keyboard for the VCS3. And how very very very bad it is to use it as a signal generator.

This sort of woke a question with me....is there actually people out there who seriously think there still is a right or a wrong way to record things? And how does that actually realate to this song and this bassline? Im very happy that people take the time to write....at all. But it surprised me that people were so opinionated about this.

Old rare equipment seems to stir up a lot of emotions in people. There seems to be a consensus that there is a right or a wrong way. I feel quite puzzled by this absolute way of thinking. I tend to think more about songs and lyrics and atmospheres. Thats my job. If other people want to view them as museuem pieces they are very welcome to do so...I have albums to record.

The rest of the day moved on fast and fun. For the verses we added a Cembalo ostinato pattern that pushed the track in a completely new direction. I did a treatment on it using the Zvex lofi loop junky which made it sound like a warped 78 rpm record but it was a bit too much so we used it on the outro instead. This will tie into the other tracks on the album that have more of a sample cut and paste feel.

The last thing we did was to work on the middle eight which had a very simple Fender Rhodes line...It needed a bit more atmosphere and colour so we treated that thru the RE-501 tape echo. Mine isnt feeling too great and is incredibly wobbly which gives the sound an almost Sigur ros haunting quality. Feedback heaven with ghosts making out around it.

After we were done with Fake it we started working on a track called Åsas sång (working title). We started by bouncing between sounds on the Mellotron M4000D but it just felt stale and boring. The Chamberlin Cello is a remarkable sound but it feels like its tooo nice and tooo great so we decided to turn it off and then Tobias had the idea of using the Roth Händle Pipe Organ instead.

And four takes later we had a remarkable very solemn sounding track. The basic background was a live take of Åsa singing and Tobias on the grand piano so very little was needed....and the pipe organ hit the spot.

Working with Tobias is always a pleasure. He is fast, positive and very sensitive to the music we are working on. Always great discussions (not only about the Music we are working on) which pushes Everything forward and gives everything more depth and understanding.

Tomorrow we will continue trying to finish some more tracks. Its gonna be fun fun fun.